Dragonfly in Amber
Page 6

I felt a bit subversive, sneaking round to interview Roger's housekeeper while he was out, and fooling Bree into the bargain. On the other hand, it would be difficult to explain to either of them just what I was doing. I hadn't yet determined exactly how or when I would tell them what I had to say, but I knew it wasn't time yet.
My fingers probed the inner pocket of my mac, reassured by the scrunch of the envelope from Scot-Search. While I hadn't paid a great deal of attention to Frank's work, I did know about the firm, which maintained a staff of half a dozen professional researchers specializing in Scottish genealogy; not the sort of place that gave you a family tree showing your relationship to Robert the Bruce and had done with it.
They'd done their usual thorough, discreet job on Roger Wakefield. I knew who his parents and grandparents had been, back some seven or eight generations. What I didn't know was what he might be made of. Time would tell me that.
I paid off the cab and splashed up the flooded path to the steps of the old minister's house. It was dry on the porch, and I had a chance to shake off the worst of the wet before the door was opened to my ring.
Fiona beamed in welcome; she had the sort of round, cheerful face whose natural expression was a smile. She was attired in jeans and a frilly apron, and the scent of lemon polish and fresh baking wafted from its folds like incense.
"Why, Mrs. Randall!" she exclaimed. "Can I be helpin' ye at all, then?"
"I think perhaps you might, Fiona," I said. "I wanted to talk to you about your grandmother."
"Are you sure you're all right, Mama? I could call Roger and ask him to go tomorrow, if you'd like me to stay with you." Brianna hovered in the doorway of the guesthouse bedroom, an anxious frown creasing her brow. She was dressed for walking, in boots, jeans, and sweater, but she'd added the brilliant orange and blue silk scarf Frank had brought her from Paris, just before his death two years before.
"Just the color of your eyes, little beauty," he'd said, smiling as he draped the scarf around her shoulders, "—orange." It was a joke between them now, the "little beauty," as Bree had topped Frank's modest five feet ten since she was fifteen. It was what he'd called her since babyhood, though, and the tenderness of the old name lingered as he reached up to touch the tip of her nose.
The scarf—the blue part—was in fact the color of her eyes; of Scottish lochs and summer skies, and the misty blue of distant mountains. I knew she treasured it, and revised my assessment of her interest in Roger Wakefield upward by several notches.
"No, I'll be fine," I assured her. I gestured toward the bedside table, adorned with a small teapot, carefully keeping warm under a knitted cozy, and a silver-plated toast rack, just as carefully keeping the toast nice and cold. "Mrs. Thomas brought me tea and toast; perhaps I'll be able to nibble a little later on." I hoped she couldn't hear the rumbling of my empty stomach under the bedclothes, registering appalled disbelief at this prospect.
"Well, all right." She turned reluctantly to the door. "We'll come right back after Culloden, though."
"Don't hurry on my account," I called after her.
I waited until I heard the sound of the door closing below, and was sure she was on her way. Only then did I reach into the drawer of the bedtable for the large Hershey bar with almonds that I had hidden there the night before.
Cordial relations with my stomach reestablished, I lay back against the pillow, idly watching the gray haze thicken in the sky outside. The tip of a budding lime branch flicked intermittently against the window; the wind was rising. It was warm enough in the bedroom, with the central-heating vent roaring away at the foot of the bed, but I shivered nonetheless. It would be cold on Culloden Field.
Not, perhaps, as cold as it had been in the April of 1746, when Bonnie Prince Charlie led his men onto that field, to stand in the face of freezing sleet and the roar of English cannon fire. Accounts of the day reported that it was bitterly cold, and the Highland wounded had lain heaped with the dead, soaked in blood and rain, awaiting the mercies of their English victors. The Duke of Cumberland, in command of the English army, had given no quarter to the fallen.
The dead were heaped up like cordwood and burned to prevent the spread of disease, and history said that many of the wounded had gone to a similar fate, without the grace of a final bullet. All of them lay now beyond the reach of war or weather, under the greensward of Culloden Field.
I had seen the place once, nearly thirty years before, when Frank had taken me there on our honeymoon. Now Frank was dead, too, and I had brought my daughter back to Scotland. I wanted Brianna to see Culloden, but no power on earth would make me set foot again on that deadly moor.
I supposed I had better stay in bed, to maintain credence in the sudden indisposition that had prevented me accompanying Brianna and Roger on their expedition; Mrs. Thomas might blab if I got up and put in an order for lunch. I peeked into the drawer; three more candy bars and a mystery novel. With luck, those would get me through the day.
The novel was good enough, but the rush of the rising wind outside was hypnotic, and the embrace of the warm bed welcoming. I dropped peacefully into sleep, to dream of kilted Highland men, and the sound of soft-spoken Scots, burring round a fire like the sound of bees in the heather.
4
CULLODEN
What a mean little piggy face!" Brianna stooped to peer fascinated at the red-coated mannequin that stood menacingly to one side of the foyer in the Culloden Visitors Centre. He stood a few inches over five feet, powdered wig thrust belligerently forward over a low brow and pendulous, pink-tinged cheeks.
"Well, he was a fat little fellow," Roger agreed, amused. "Hell of a general, though, at least as compared to his elegant cousin over there." He waved a hand at the taller figure of Charles Edward Stuart on the other side of the foyer, gazing nobly off into the distance under his blue velvet bonnet with its white cockade, loftily ignoring the Duke of Cumberland.
"They called him ‘Butcher Billy.' " Roger gestured at the Duke, stolid in white knee breeches and gold-braided coat. "For excellent reason. Aside from what they did here"—he waved toward the expanse of the spring-green moor outside, dulled by the lowering sky—"Cumberland's men were responsible for the worst reign of English terror ever seen in the Highlands. They chased the survivors of the battle back into the hills, burning and looting as they went. Women and children were turned out to starve, and the men shot down where they stood—with no effort to find out whether they'd ever fought for Charlie. One of the Duke's contemporaries said of him, ‘He created a desert and called it peace'—and I'm afraid the Duke of Cumberland is still rather noticeably unpopular hereabouts."
This was true; the curator of the visitors' museum, a friend of Roger's, had told him that while the figure of the Bonnie Prince was treated with reverent respect, the buttons off the Duke's jacket were subject to constant disappearance, while the figure itself had been the butt of more than one rude joke.
"He said one morning he came in early and turned on the light, to find a genuine Highland dirk sticking in His Grace's belly," Roger said, nodding at the podgy little figure. "Said it gave him a right turn."
"I'd think so," Brianna murmured, looking at the Duke with raised brows. "People still take it that seriously?"
"Oh, aye. Scots have long memories, and they're not the most forgiving of people."
"Really?" She looked at him curiously. "Are you Scottish, Roger? Wakefield doesn't sound like a Scottish name, but there's something about the way you talk about the Duke of Cumberland…" There was the hint of a smile around her mouth, and he wasn't sure whether he was being teased, but he answered her seriously enough.
"Oh, aye." He smiled as he said it. "I'm Scots. Wakefield's not my own name, see; the Reverend gave it me when he adopted me. He was my mother's uncle—when my parents were killed in the War, he took me to live with him. But my own name is MacKenzie. As for the Duke of Cumberland"—he nodded at the plate-glass window, through which the monuments of Culloden Field were plainly visible. "There's a clan stone out there, with the name of MacKenzie carved on it, and a good many of my relatives under it."
He reached out and flicked a gold epaulet, leaving it swinging. "I don't feel quite so personal about it as some, but I haven't forgotten, either." He held out a hand to her. "Shall we go outside?"
It was cold outside, with a gusty wind that lashed two pennons, flying atop the poles set at either side of the moor. One yellow, one red, they marked the positions where the two commanders had stood behind their troops, awaiting the outcome of the battle.
"Well back out of the way, I see," Brianna observed dryly. "No chance of getting in the way of a stray bullet."
Roger noticed her shivering, and drew her hand further through his arm, bringing her close. He thought he might burst from the sudden swell of happiness touching her gave him, but tried to disguise it with a retreat into historical monologue. "Well, that was how generals led, back then—from the rear. Especially Charlie; he ran off so fast at the end of the battle that he left behind his sterling silver picnic set."
"A picnic set? He brought a picnic to the battle?"
"Oh, aye." Roger found that he quite liked being Scottish for Brianna. He usually took pains to keep his accent modulated under the all-purpose Oxbridge speech that served him at the university, but now he was letting it have free rein for the sake of the smile that crossed her face when she heard it.
"D'ye know why they called him ‘Prince Charlie'?" Roger asked. "English people always think it was a nickname, showing how much his men loved him."
"It wasn't?"
Roger shook his head. "No, indeed. His men called him Prince Tcharlach"—he spelled it carefully—"which is the Gaelic for Charles. Tcharlach mac Seamus, ‘Charles, son of James.' Very formal and respectful indeed. It's only that Tcharlach in Gaelic sounds the hell of a lot like ‘Charlie' in English."
Brianna grinned. "So he never was ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie'?"
"Not then." Roger shrugged. "Now he is, of course. One of those little historical mistakes that get passed on for fact. There are a lot of them."
"And you a historian!" Brianna said, teasing.
Roger smiled wryly. "That's how I know."
They wandered slowly down the graveled paths that led through the battlefield, Roger pointing out the positions of the different regiments that had fought there, explaining the order of battle, recounting small anecdotes of the commanders.
As they walked, the wind died down, and the silence of the field began to assert itself. Gradually their conversation died away as well, until they were talking only now and then, in low voices, almost whispers. The sky was gray with cloud from horizon to horizon, and everything beneath its bowl seemed muted, with only the whisper of the moor plants speaking in the voices of the men who fed them.
"This is the place they call the Well of Death." Roger stooped by the small spring. Barely a foot square, it was a tiny pool of dark water, welling under a ridge of stone. "One of the Highland chieftains died here; his followers washed the blood from his face with the water from this spring. And over there are the graves of the clans."
The clan stones were large boulders of gray granite, rounded by weather and blotched with lichens. They sat on patches of smooth grass, widely scattered near the edge of the moor. Each one bore a single name, the carving so faded by weather as to be nearly illegible in some cases. MacGillivray. MacDonald. Fraser. Grant. Chisholm. MacKenzie.
"Look," Brianna said, almost in a whisper. She pointed at one of the stones. A small heap of greenish-gray twigs lay there; a few early spring flowers mingled, wilted, with the twigs.
"Heather," Roger said. "It's more common in the summer, when the heather is blooming—then you'll see heaps like that in front of every clan stone. Purple, and here and there a branch of the white heather—the white is for luck, and for kingship; it was Charlie's emblem, that and the white rose."
"Who leaves them?" Brianna squatted on her heels next to the path, touching the twigs with a gentle finger.
"Visitors." Roger squatted next to her. He traced the faded letters on the stone—FRASER. "People descended from the families of the men who were killed here. Or just those who like to remember them."
She looked sidelong at him, hair drifting around her face. "Have you ever done it?"
He looked down, smiling at his hands as they hung between his knees.
"Yes. I suppose it's very sentimental, but I do."
Brianna turned to the thicket of moor plants that edged the path on the other side.
"Show me which is heather," she said.
On the way home, the melancholy of Culloden lifted, but the feeling of shared sentiment lingered, and they talked and laughed together like old friends.
"It's too bad Mother couldn't come with us," Brianna remarked as they turned into the road where the Randalls' bed-and-breakfast was.
Much as he liked Claire Randall, Roger didn't agree at all that it was too bad she hadn't come. Three, he thought, would have been a crowd, and no mistake. But he grunted noncommitally, and a moment later asked, "How is your mother? I hope she's not terribly ill."
"Oh, no, it's just an upset stomach—at least that's what she says." Brianna frowned to herself for a moment, then turned to Roger, laying a hand lightly on his leg. He felt the muscles quiver from knee to groin, and had a hard time keeping his mind on what she was saying. She was still talking about her mother.
"…think she's all right?" she finished. She shook her head, and copper glinted from the waves of her hair, even in the dull light of the car. "I don't know; she seems awfully preoccupied. Not ill, exactly—more as though she's kind of worried about something."
Roger felt a sudden heaviness in the pit of his stomach.
"Mphm," he said. "Maybe just being away from her work. I'm sure it will be all right." Brianna smiled gratefully at him as they pulled up in front of Mrs. Thomas's small stone house.
"It was great, Roger," she said, touching him lightly on the shoulder. "But there wasn't much here to help with Mama's project. Can't I help you with some of the grubby stuff?"
Roger's spirits lightened considerably, and he smiled up at her. "I think that might be arranged. Want to come tomorrow and have a go at the garage with me? If it's filth you want, you can't get much grubbier than that."
"Great." She smiled, leaning on the car to look back in at him. "Maybe Mother will want to come along and help."
He could feel his face stiffen, but kept gallantly smiling.
"Right," he said. "Great. I hope so."
In the event, it was Brianna alone who came to the manse the next day.
"Mama's at the public library," she explained. "Looking up old phone directories. She's trying to find someone she used to know."
Roger's heart skipped a beat at that. He had checked the Reverend's phonebook the night before. There were three local listings under the name "James Fraser," and two more with different first names, but the middle initial "J."
"Well, I hope she finds him," he said, still trying for casualness. "You're really sure you want to help? It's boring, filthy work." Roger looked at Brianna dubiously, but she nodded, not at all discomposed at the prospect.
"I know. I used to help my father sometimes, dredging through old records and finding footnotes. Besides, it's Mama's project; the least I can do is help you with it."
"All right." Roger glanced down at his white shirt. "Let me change, and we'll go have a look."
The garage door creaked, groaned, then surrendered to the inevitable and surged suddenly upward, amid the twanging of springs and clouds of dust.
Brianna waved her hands back and forth in front of her face, coughing. "Gack!" she said. "How long since anyone's been in this place?"
"Eons, I expect." Roger replied absently. He shone his torch around the inside of the garage, briefly lighting stacks of cardboard cartons and wooden crates, old steamer trunks smeared with peeling labels, and amorphous tarpaulin-draped shapes. Here and there, the upturned legs of furniture poked through the gloom like the skeletons of small dinosaurs, protruding from their native rock formations.
There was a sort of fissure in the junk; Roger edged into this and promptly disappeared into a tunnel bounded by dust and shadows, his progress marked by the pale spot of his torch as it shone intermittently on the ceiling. At last, with a cry of triumph, he seized the dangling tail of a string hanging from above, and the garage was suddenly illuminated in the glare of an oversized bulb.
"This way," Roger said, reappearing abruptly and taking Brianna by the hand. "There's sort of a clear space in back."
An ancient table stood against the back wall. Perhaps originally the centerpiece of the Reverend Wakefield's dining room, it had evidently gone through several successive incarnations as kitchen block, toolbench, sawhorse, and painting table, before coming to rest in this dusty sanctuary. A heavily cobwebbed window overlooked it, through which a dim light shone on the nicked, paint-splattered surface.
"We can work here," Roger said, yanking a stool out of the mess and dusting it perfunctorily with a large handkerchief. "Have a seat, and I'll see if I can pry the window open; otherwise, we'll suffocate."
Brianna nodded, but instead of sitting down, began to poke curiously through the nearer piles of junk, as Roger heaved at the warped window frame. He could hear her behind him, reading the labels on some of the boxes. "Here's 1930–33," she said, "And here's 1942–46. What are these?"
"Journals," said Roger, grunting as he braced his elbows on the grimy sill. "My father—the Reverend, I mean—he always kept a journal. Wrote it up every night after supper."
"Looks like he found plenty to write about." Brianna hoisted down several of the boxes, and stacked them to the side, in order to inspect the next layer. "Here's a bunch of boxes with names on them—‘Kerse,' ‘Livingston,' ‘Balnain.' Parishioners?"
"No. Villages." Roger paused in his labors for a moment, panting. He wiped his brow, leaving a streak of dirt down the sleeve of his shirt. Luckily both of them were dressed in old clothes, suitable for rootling in filth. "Those will be notes on the history of various Highland villages. Some of those boxes ended up as books, in fact; you'll see them in some of the local tourist shops through the Highlands."